Who needs schools when we have Fox News?

Feb 7th, 2017 | By
Category: Notes and Comment Blog

The Senate confirmed rich donor and ignoramus Betsy DeVos as education secretary this morning. Theocrat Mike Pence broke the tie.

For many in the education community, Ms. DeVos’s full-throated support for charter schools and vouchers — which allow students to use taxpayer dollars to pay tuition at private, religious and for-profit schools — is emblematic of a disconnection from the realities of the education system. Neither Ms. DeVos nor any of her children attended a public school.

…

David E. Kirkland, an education professor at New York University who has studied Ms. DeVos’s impact in Michigan, said he feared she could badly hurt public education across the country and pull resources out of schools in need of federal funding. “Her extensive conflicts of interest and record of diverting money away from vulnerable students and into the pockets of the rich make DeVos completely unfit for the position she was just confirmed to,” he said.

Ms. DeVos has focused on expanding parental choice in education and embracing charter schools, but also on vouchers. Her ideology was a good fit for the education platform that Mr. Trump put forward during the campaign, which called for a $20 billion voucher initiative aimed at low-income children.

But freeing such an enormous sum would most likely require the reallocation of existing federal education money, as well as a realignment of congressional priorities.

Oh well, it’s only education.

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